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1 Penelope's parents were dull and dispassionate automatons crawling towards their deaths she wrote in her diary at the age of fourteen it was unfortunate because she herself was brimming with vivacity and racing towards a marvellous life that stretched gloriously ahead of her as she also wrote in her diary her father, Edwin, was a surveyor, born and raised in York and, Penelope wrote, a slave to routine: rising on the dot, leaving on the dot, returning on the dot, dinner on the dot, bed on the dot, life on the dot my father has never said anything remotely of import, she wrote, that has not been regurgitated from the Daily Telegraph he reads every evening when he comes home from work the only interesting thing about him, she noted, was also the most seedy: a thick envelope of pornographic postcards hidden inside his tool trunk in the shed, never imagining that his daughter didn't need a penis to nail her own picture frames to her bedroom wall

Penelope's mother, Margaret, was also a dreadful dullard, although her background was somewhat more exotic she'd been born in the newly created Union of South Africa after her English parents sold up their failing barley farm at Hutton Conyers in Yorkshire to take advantage of the Natives Land Act of 1913 which allocated over 80% of land ownership to the only people capable of looking after it, her mother told her the white race us her mother said the natives had to surrender their land to the inevitable charge of economic progress for the betterment of society as a whole and as they were now desperate for employment, labour was cheap my father bought a barley farm there, Penelope, but failed to make a success of it because his farm workers were idle, resentful and thieving he was advised by his fellow farmers to tie the worst offenders to a tree and flog them thereby setting an example it seemed to do the trick when he began to carry out the same punishment for crop theft the workers seemed to settle down and get on with it after that until one day when he was doing the rounds on horseback, a group of wayward field hands appeared out of the woods like a pack of frothing animals and set upon him before he knew it, he was on the ground, his whip was in their hands, and they were using it against him the poor man didn't stand a chance your grandfather's mind never recovered, Penelope, he sold the farm for a song, brought the family back to England, we moved in with relatives and he never worked again I was relieved to relocate to England away from the hatefulness of the natives who'd done such a terrible thing to my father nor was it a place for a white girl to grow into womanhood I didn't like the way native men looked at me

Penelope's mother came of age in civilized England, she said, enjoyed dances, made friends, cycled into the countryside on Sundays with a group of them, including a few bounders who were nevertheless such fun, had picnics, got merry on gin from their hip flasks she'd sneak out at midnight to bathe naked in the River Foss with them hitched her skirts above the knee when she was far away enough from home flagrantly smoked in public when women who did so were considered vulgar only decadent sapphics who cut their hair short and wore male clothing got away with it in those days, Penelope I met your father at a hop, he was somewhat older than me, very handsome before he lost all his hair, called for me every Saturday evening at seven o'clock on the dot of the grandfather clock in my grandparents' hallway he started attending my church on Sundays, met me outside the haberdashery where I worked I'd wanted to go to a training college to become an elementary school teacher, one of the few professions open to women in my day, except there was the marriage bar, Penelope, which meant I'd have to stop teaching as soon as I became a wife there was really little point in training for something I'd have to give up unlike the cads I'd known, your father was sober and sensible, which is what I needed in a marriage my father had by then tragically died in an asylum it was another terrible time for my family and your father easily slipped into my life as a source of companionship and comfort, he took me rowing on the River Foss, although never swimming or dancing, never drinking all of which he regarded as unattractive pursuits for ladies after three years' courtship, we wed I do miss dancing, Penelope, the great pleasure it gave me, I often think of the past, of the person I used to be I don't know where she went Penelope's mother stopped talking, returned to her knitting, sewing, cooking, cleaning, ironing or any of the other activities that filled her days

leaving the conversation dangling Penelope found it hard to imagine her mother had once been so rebellious and gregarious she felt sorry for her having to choose between a career or a family which seemed terribly unfair and just as her mother couldn't wait to escape the savages of South Africa, she couldn't wait to go to college, have a career and leave her parents' straitjacketed lives behind then came the moment they told her she was a lie and any compassion she felt for her mother sank without trace to be replaced by a groundswell of bitterness the lie was bad enough, although in years to come she came to understand their reasoning, rather, it was the cruelty in their telling of it a cruelty that exposed the fault lines in who they were and who she was going to be in the world you are not our daughter in the biological sense, her father told her at lunch on her sixteenth birthday (great timing) she'd been left in a cot on the steps of a church they'd waited until she was old enough to understand she'd been mysteriously deposited without certification, no note, no clues, nothing they'd tried for their own child for years, failed, found her in an orphanage, it was quite easy to adopt back then, they signed papers, took her home what they didn't add, in that moment, was that they loved her, something they'd never told her what she needed in that moment was a declaration of unconditional love from the people who'd raised her as their own instead they carried on as normal, even though tears were streaming down her face they remained seated on the high-backed chairs in their allotted places around the oval dining table covered with a fringed tablecloth they unravelled the napkins rolled up in wooden rings with their names etched into them

they ate the lamb chops, minted potatoes and buttered peas they had for Saturday lunch passing the gravy passing the pepper passing the salt Penelope, unable to dislodge a potato stuck in her throat, left the table without permission, ran choking upstairs to her bedroom where she collapsed in a sobbing heap on her bed, desperately hoping that at least her mother might check up on her, she listened for the pad of slippered feet on the stairs, a tentative knock, the door opening, a pat on her back a cuddle was too much to hope for instead she heard the man she'd thought her father until a short while ago leave the house to play golf with his brother (no longer her uncle), as he did every Saturday afternoon the woman who used to be her mother would be sitting in front of the fire crocheting white booties for her youngest niece, Linda (no longer Penelope's baby cousin) Penelope could hear comedy and laughter playing on the radio downstairs to them it was a normal Saturday afternoon Penelope broke down into tears for months afterwards, in private, away from the two people she lived with, who wouldn't approve of such demonstrative behaviour away from her school friends who couldn't be let in on such a shameful secret she was an orphan a bastard unwanted rejected now the disparity between them made sense her parents were not her parents, her birth date was not her birth day she was not of their blood or history she kept torturing herself with terrible thoughts

how could her real parents have given her away so heartlessly? discarded on the steps of a church like a sack of rubbish what if rats had got to her first? or foxes? or a freezing night? how could they have been so heartless? and just who were they, anyhow? if she didn't know who they were how could she know who she was? there was no paper trail she was a foundling anonymous unidentified mysterious later when Penelope studied herself more closely in her dressing table mirror, it became absurdly clear to her that she looked nothing like Edwin and Margaret, as she would now think of them Edwin was short, anaemic, blue-eyed and aquiline, features that suited a man whose emotions rarely rose to any occasion, even his occasional bursts of laughter sounded as if he were breaking a self-imposed rule not to enjoy himself Margaret was even shorter, barely scraping five foot, thinning hair, grey- eyed, grey pallor according to her wedding photograph she'd once been pretty now she just looked washed out Penelope, on the other hand, was tall for a girl at almost five-nine, with the full natural pout and hazel eyes that sealed her reputation as a glamorous beauty at school, she wore her curly, strawberry-blonde hair in a style à la Marilyn Monroe, had a 'light dusting of freckles' around her nose, and acquired an easily-won suntan in summer, considered très chic because it gave her a St Tropez glow à la jet set Penelope decided she would go to college, marry a man who idolized her, become a teacher and have children

all of which would fill the gaping, aching chasm she now carried inside her the feeling of being moored wanted loved done a no one.